Living Hermeneutics in Motion: An Analysis and Evaluation of Paul Ricoeur's Contribution to Biblical Hermeneutics

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Summary: A Hope-filled Way Forward in Biblical Interpretation
Review: I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in thinking deeply about how to read the Bible in our present post-modern situation, and understanding how our own ways of reading it fit into a much wider philosophical context.

The book begins with a tremendously helpful explanation of the extreme positions taken by modernism and post-modernism in relation to interpretation. On the one hand, modernism purports a utopian trust in human reason's ability to correctly interpret and understand a text's meaning. On the other hand, post-modernism, in its extreme form, finds no meaning inherent in the text. Texts cannot refer to anything outside of themselves, and are merely internal systems of signs and symbols. Laughery finds a way forward between these two extremes of absolute certainty and absolute indeterminacy with regard to interpretation in the work of the French philosopher/hermeneutician Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur refocuses the discussion in hermeneutics on the "world" of the text. It may seem obvious to us that a conversation about how to interpret a text would actually focus on the given text itself. But instead, the text itself is often left out of the analysis in favor of a focus on what lies "behind" the text (a Romantic notion) or on the symbols or codes that are at "play" within the text and which cannot carry meaning in themselves (the structuralist position). In his return to the text, Ricoeur demonstrates the differences and similarities between the speech act/event and the written word or text. The text, like the spoken word, referents an author, a reader, and the world created by the text itself: a speaking subject says something about something to someone.

What Laughery calls a "living hermeneutics in motion" is based on Ricoeur's hermeneutical movement from understanding (prefiguration) through explanation (configuration) to new understanding (refiguration). Laughery uses this to open up new possibilities for reading the Bible in a way that acknowledges the limitations of a text and of its reader, without having to throw one's hands in the air and give up on finding any meaning in the text at all. And he makes way for us to allow ourselves to be transformed by the text (in a "new understanding"), rather than continuously forcing our subjective selves and experiences onto the text. Laughery takes this hermeneutic a vital step further than Ricoeur when he says that not only should the Biblical text transform our lives as individual readers, but it should transform the world as its readers act it out into the world. In this engagement with the world, the text's capacity to explain can be estimated, and the reader can return with text back through the three movements of the hermeneutic. This is the "living" part of the hermeneutics in motion.

Crucial to the argument for this new hermeneutic are several other contingent discussions expounded within the book. In them, Laughery puts Ricoeur in dialogue with theologians, philosophers, and literary theorists such as R. Bultmann, H. Frei, J.D. Crossan, and David Carr. Laughery addresses at length the two extreme methodologies of structuralism (no meaning, only play) and historical criticism (meaning found in historical evidence). When these are elevated to theories rather than methods, both structuralism and historical criticism become reductionistic. Laughery shows how both are necessary to the middle process of explanation. By way of an example, Laughery takes us through a comparison of Ricoeur and Crossan's work on the parables of Jesus. Crossan correctly shows the parables' ability to dis-orient the reader. However, that is where he stops. Ricoeur argues that the parables, full of meaning, also have the power to re-orient. Then, in an investigation into the current debates about narrative, Laughery shows how Ricoeur offers a balanced approach that avoids the modernist tendency to equate narrative with historical fact and the post-modern propensity to equate fiction and history.

Before concluding, Laughery offers an invaluable alternative in the debate between those who argue for a consideration of authorial intent, and those who profess a reader-response theory (as in Stanley Fish's famous quote, "the reader's response is not to the meaning, it is the meaning"). He clarifies that acknowledging the intent of the author should not be equated with the extreme position that takes intent to mean psychological state. Rather, the author's intent should be located in his/her literary act.

Because this was written as Laughery's dissertation for a Swiss university, many of the quotations from Ricoeur remain in French. However, Laughery seems to always paraphrase them following their citation. He also helps us through the argument by continuously reminding us from where we have come and where we are headed. The structure of the book echoes the "living hermeneutic in motion" in its division into three parts: prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration.

The difficulty of this read, however, is by no means the primary reason I predict that I and many others will be re-reading it for many years. Laughery, always concerned that we do not fall into the easy either-or traps that are so prevalent, is a prophetic voice in our present atmosphere of confusion over interpretation. Many of us within the Church today recognize that our current divisive issues stem from conflicting understandings of how to interpret the Bible and what it means to say that the Bible is "true." I believe that this book's relevance to our current situation will only become more and more evident. Gregory J. Laughery is a name we should be watching if we are interested in finding a hope-filled way forward with academic integrity. Even if the only thing one takes away from this book is a clearer understanding of the modernism-post-modernism problem as it relates to Biblical interpretation, it is more than worth the read. Readers will not help but start to recognize how often that problem surfaces in even the most casual of conversations about the Bible.

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Summary: Paul Ricouer, by way of Greg Laughery: good!
Review: In my reading of Paul Ricouer over the past decade, I became enthralled with this theologian/philosopher/literateur's sense of the text as something to be taken seriously, but also his wrestling with the question, "but how, in a world of shifting Theory and a healthy skepticism regarding "objective" readings?

Ricouer himself has raised and answered many of these questions, but I always felt the need for a more systematic overview of this thought. If only he (or someone) would present a more comprehensive/cohering view! And Greg Laughery has now done it, in his wonderful little book, "Living Hermeneutics In Motion" ("An Analysis and Evaluation of Paul Ricoeur's Contribution to Biblical Hermeneutics"), University Press of America, 2002.

Laughery's review of the contemporary hermeneutical scene is clear and lively, and his contextualizing of Ricouer's thought extremely helpful. Most helpful, because the reader gains a better sense of just how compelling Ricouer's contribution really is.

And Laughery contributes to this hermeneutical dialogue with his own refreshing insight, particularly in regard to understanding biblical parables. The author's persistent interest in negotiating "boundaries"--of text and reader, of "fiction" and "history"--help place this work among the "must reads" for persons serious enough about biblical interpretation to be at sea. Greg Laughery's mediation of Ricouer will provide interesting if not entirely "safe" harbor.

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Summary: Exciting look at Ricouer's views on Biblical interpretation
Review: This book situates the work of linguistic philosopher Paul Ricouer over against the imperious claims of modernism and the negating voices of post-modernism. Ricoeur, according to Laughery, offers a way out of the current impasse in Bible interpretation.

"Living hermeneutics in motion" points to Ricoeur's vision of the interpretive journey as a rigorous, dynamic process through the text to a new understanding, guided by and tethered by the text itself. The book explores Ricoeur's thinking on the nature of texts, methodology, and narrative. Laughery places Ricoeur in dialogue with a host of scholars in the field of interpretation theory.

Ricoeur prefers a dialectical approach over either-or positions. For example, he insists that Biblical discourse is grounded in actual events, but also claims that the event "disappears" in the inscribing of the text. The book also considers Ricouer's middle way through the extremes of historical criticism and structuralism, a postmodernist methodology which treats the text as a system of self-referring symbols. Ricoeur sees both as fruitful stages in the interpretive movement through the text.

According to Laughery, the strength of Ricouer's view is his insistence on the centrality of the text in Biblical interpretation. By confronting the reader with a real world, the text challenges her to reach a new understanding of God, self, and the world. This motion through the text is transformative.

Laughery's approach is balanced and informed by extensive scholarship. He also critques Ricouer at several key points, such as the proper role of authorial intent guiding interpretation. Caution: Readers with no French ability or only a smattering of French may be frustrated by the use of citations in French (this was originally a doctoral dissertation for a Swiss university).

All in all, however, "Living Hermeneutics in Motion" is a comprehensive survey of Ricouer's hermeneutical thought. Laughery presents a compelling case for taking seriously Ricoeur's contribution to Biblical hermeneutics, and organizes Ricoeur's non-systematic works on this subject in a way that should make it easier for others to build on.